The plaque outside the prison in Le Puy commemorates the escapes. It says nothing about how the Stalinists murdered the Trotskyist escapees.

Communist Party members these days tend to be kindly looking pensioners shuffling round a demonstration, holding a big Lidl bag and selling the Morning Star. Talk to them and they are happy to explain at length that while Stalin had his rough edges you couldn’t make an omelette without killing millions of workers and farmers or handing Greece over to the British. However in their day CP members demonstrated an aptitude for anti-socialist violence that their mentor would have approved of.

Pierre Broué and Raymond Vacheron published a book in 1997 called Meurtres au Maquis recounting an episode that took place in the town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haute Loire. It’s never likely to be translated and as far as I know the story of how the Partie communiste français (PCF) murdered the Trotskyists Pietro Tresso, Jean Raboul, Abraham Sadek (alias André Lefèvre) and Maurice Sieglmann (alias Pierre Salini) hasn’t been told anywhere in English. Tresso, also known as Blasco was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party. The authors claim that the PCI’s leadership, in particular Giulio Ceretti, exiled at the time in Moscow ordered his murder because he understood that a revolutionary of Tresso’s stature denouncing the PCI’s capitulation to the Italian ruling class would find a real echo in the insurgent workers’ movement. The book is based on interviews with participants, documents and memoirs. It’s worth summarising.

Tresso went into exile in France during Mussolini’s regime. In 1942 he was arrested, beaten and tortured by the Vichy police on behalf of the Gestapo in Marseille. He was sentenced to forced labour in prison along with six other Trotskyists. They were relatively lucky to be sentenced together. When Pierre Salini was sent to the military prison in Lodève the Stalinists on discovering that he was a Trotskyists imprisoned him within the prison. They refused to speak to him, would prevent him from using the toilets, knock over his food tray and destroy his letters. This was also their treatment for anarchists and Communist dissidents. They were doing worse thing s on the outside. Local party branches used to publish lists giving the names of “enemies of the nation”. These included thieves, collaborators, anarchists and Trotskyists. These lists would have easily been available to the Vichy police and the Gestapo and included helpful details such as whether or not the person was Jewish. Copies of these appear in the book. In 1944 twelve PCF members escaped from a prison in Marseille. The leader of the escape, PCF member Charles Poli refused to open the cell door for two anarchists. His reasoning is pure Stalinism. “They were in the resistance too… But they were not patriots. On Bastille Day we Communists put up the French tricolour. They put up a black flag…That’s why I refused to let them escape with us. I would have opened the door for a monarchist, but not for an anarchist.” (p.74 my translation). Poli certainly knew what his party was going to do after the war.

Eventually the prisoners ended up in the prison of Le Puy-en-Velay. As a group they were able to earn a certain amount of respect from the PCF members, particularly the younger ones. They were no longer as isolated and managed to maintain political discussions and even establish a small library. One of the prisoners even wrote a very optimistic (and wrong) document saying that relations with the Stalinists were rapidly improving.

A well planned escape took place on the night of the 24-25 April 1943. The Trotskyists were not invited to participate. However all the prisoners were recaptured within days. On 1st October the same year there was a second escape. This time sixty-nine prisoners, including the Trotskyists and a guard who helped in the attempt got away. Vacheron and Broué argue that this attempt had the hallmarks of an intelligence services escape. This attempt was lead by an Italian Giovanni Sosso and they make a convincing case that he was working as an enforcer for Soviet intelligence, particularly among Italian exiles in the PCF.

Despite problems with transport, food and navigation the escapees made it into the neighbouring mountains where some Maquis units were already established and had considerable support from the local farmers. But here too the Stalinists began isolating the Trotskyists and they were kept under constant surveillance. One evening Sosso called a meeting of the non-Trotskyist resistance fighters and gave a speech about the need to struggle against enemies of the revolution like the Trotskyists. His subordinates took up the theme saying that the Trotskyists would give away the location of the camp and poison the water supply. These had been standard propaganda themes for much of the political life of the PCF rank and file and they were persuaded to pass a death sentence. (For some reason reading the account of the “debate” brought back images of last year’s Respect conference and well-intentioned people swallowing a pile of horseshit. I really don’t know why.)

As was the fashion at the time the men were told to write their biographies before they were led off to be shot on October 26th or 27th. They were buried in a field. Sosso, the chief executioner later became a Resistance leader under the name of Jean Guillemot.

I’ve omitted a lot of detail which I may fill in later but on reading this piece of history I felt that it should be re-told.